TORRES DEL PAINE NATIONAL PARK, Chile -- A screen of sturdy netting covers the windshield of the bus, giving it the look of an armored personnel carrier. A man sitting next to me explains it's there to deflect rocks hurled by the winds that often pound across the plains.
Looking out the window, I see only the pampas, a vast expanse of copper scrub. Stubby trees huddle against the ground, their branches barely trembling. Above, the blue sky seems rinsed clean of clouds.The bus is rocking its way down a gravel road toward Torres del Paine National Park. Postcards of the towers of Paine ("Paine" may have been a Tehuelche Indian word for blue) fill gift shop racks throughout Chile. Torres is often the first word on the lips of visitors and locals alike when they speak of Patagonia, this rugged land at the southern tip of South America that Chile shares with Argentina.
Lady Florence Dixon was one of the first Europeans to write about traveling in this region. "Without doubt there are wild countries more favored by nature in many ways," she wrote in 1880.
Only a few hours ago, I was standing in the hallway of Patagonia Adventure, a busy hostel in the hamlet of Puerto Natales. I was consulting a large wall map of the nearly 600,000-acre park that Rodrigo Figueroa, the hostel's owner, replaces seasonally. From December to March, Chile's summer tourist glut, through winter's more casual trickle, fingers probe the map, tracing its ribbon-like contour lines, stabbing points denoting campsites and mountain peaks. After a season's worth of visitors pore over it, the map looks ragged.
Puerto Natales, where no building climbs more than a few stories high and all are colored in a palette of weathered wood, is the jumping off point for Torres, 93 miles away. Once a week, a ferry with a full load of trekkers crawls up through the fjords carved out by glacial ice streams. Those disembarking or arriving by bus are met by determined packs of local boys and girls, brandishing fliers for the hostels their parents run.
Two hours out of Puerto Natales, signs of wilderness begin to appear. Shaggy brown guanaco pepper the landscape. Like sentinels, these relatives of the llama watch the bus roar by without moving. A wide lake spreads out beside the road. The water looks steely and cold. The bus driver stops to fill his water bottles.
Then, as we take a curve, the peaks of Torres del Paine come into view -- a spiky crown of mountains, streaked with clouds, that seems to have burst out of the lowlands.
At the entrance to the park, a lack of proper roads keeps the bus from going any farther. Still unaccustomed to the hulking peaks above, we snap pictures instinctively as we file into a whitewashed ranger station. After we sign in and pay our fees -- about $12 -- the rangers make sure no hiker enters the park alone or unequipped. The isolation of the park matched with the rangers' lack of resources make emergency rescues nearly impossible.
Trails encircle the knot of mountains, the tallest of which reaches almost 10,000 feet. Rather than hike around the entire park, we, like many people, will visit its highlights over five days via the circuit's southern half, which appears on maps as a rough "W" that dips in and out of the mountains.
I walk up the steep, gravelly slope, easing into the group's pace. We are all in shorts and slathered with sunscreen. I try to concentrate on the small patch of ground at my feet instead of the distant ridgeline but cannot help gawking at the landscape. We're toiling up the lower extremities of Mount Almirante Nieto, a flat-faced mountain with a permanent snowcap. A cloud seems to be irrevocably caught on the summit. Craning my neck to take in the mountain, I see a huge bird, then two more wheeling against the blue sky: Andean condors. They were incorporated into Chile's national emblem in 1834.
Within an hour we reach the ridge and turn to see the pampas stretch out below us, interrupted only by lakes, each one a different shade. Turquoise, sapphire, emerald, they look like dropped gems. I wonder how this view has changed. The Tehuelches, a hunting and gathering people, lived in this area for more than two centuries. By the end of the 1800s colonization by Europeans had begun. They cleared the land to establish the massive sheep and cattle ranches, called estancias, that came to define the character of the region.
Later I would meet Eduardo Smith, a former bronc buster who worked for almost 20 years on the ranch that thrived at the base of this mountain. He shot dozens of pumas -- the big cats that still roam the park -- giving their skins to his boss. Smith would show me pictures of himself as a young man, waving to the camera with a skinned puma slung over his shoulder.
The 1967 agrarian reform broke up most of the sprawling ranches. Torres itself became a world biosphere reserve in 1978.
Late in the afternoon we reach the trail that leads to the view of the towers. The map shows that tonight's campsite is not far, so we stash our packs in the woods to hike unencumbered up to the park's eponymous attraction.
A tumbling stream leads us through a lush thicket of trees to a steep boulder field where orange, spray-painted rocks point the way to the ridge. When I arrive, I'm halted in my tracks by a gust of wind and the sight of the three granite towers clustered around a deep bowl of water, tinged green by sediment. I walk down to the edge of the pond. Its water numbs my hand. Staring up at the gothic spires that were crystallized deep within the earth and then thrust toward the sky millions of years ago, I lose track of my companions and even the world outside this place and its awesome geometry.
By the time we come down and reach our campsite, a clearing near a swift creek, it is 8 p.m. The sun is still high. Patagonia, in its proximity to the South Pole, enjoys long summer days. A drawn out sunset concludes at 11 p.m. We make camp, cook a pasta dinner, tell travel stories and retire to our tents just as the light is draining from the sky.
The night wind that ripped at my tent, giving me dreams of flying, has calmed by morning, leaving a brisk chill and sunshine that will last all day -- our longest, about 11 miles. Trail time is measured in footsteps, slow shifts in scenery and the space between meals. We descend, retracing our steps from the previous day, until we meet a new trail at the bottom of the eastern leg of the W.
All day and into the evening, we traverse the sloping base of the mountain until we reach Camp Italiano. We spend the night at the foot of the Cuernos, or horns of Paine -- white granite mountains evenly striped with brown layers of sedimentary rock, all locked in icy rubble that often booms like thunder as it breaks away, spewing avalanches.
As we continue our rolling traverse the next day, we gain better and better views to the west of snow-crusted mountains. In the foreground, and sometimes at our feet, ponds and lakes open up, always reflecting a unique shade. The plant life, forced low to the ground by the wind, compensates with a riot of colors and textures. Especially beautiful are the crimson blooms of the ciruelillo plants that ooze sticky pollen and coat my clothing when I brush them.
Late in the afternoon of day three, after hiking through an austere stand of burned-out trees, we arrive at Lake Pehoe, at the base of the W's western leg. Huge, wind-teased and hemmed in on three sides by mountains, the lake accepts the routine visits of a small boat ferrying travelers to Refugio Pehoe. We head to the handsome, wooden lodge where boots must be shed before entering. Inside, pots are simmering on the stove -- dinner for the dozen paying overnighters assembled in the dining room, relaxing with books and steaming mugs. Instantly ravenous, we consider our own forlorn rations, still uncooked and stowed in our packs. After a quick discussion we pony up. Not for chicken stew but for two boxes of wine: one white, one red.
We make camp at a beautiful, grassy, sheltered site at the edge of the lake. Only later do we see the sign noting that our site is reserved for large, organized groups. The sign is easy to ignore.
Just after dawn the next morning, we set out for Glacier Gray, six miles away. We know we are getting close after lunch when the wind suddenly intensifies. The windbreaker I'm wearing ripples like a plummeting parachutist's. My already chapped lips feel like two pieces of rubber. As we move up the valley, the packed dirt of the trail becomes a coastline of worn, red rock. Dwarf icebergs that have been calved from the glacier drift in the lake below.
We arrive at a point that juts out into the lake like a finger pointing to Glacier Gray, about 200 yards away. The glacier's leading edge is a three-story wall of ice. Locked in its maw is a small, forested island. The splintered ice, choked with the debris accumulated over eons, looks dirty and chaotic, but it also has a soft, ultramarine glow that the sun brings out. The glacier takes over the lake and seems to have no end. To my eyes, its glare merges at the horizon with the sky and sun.
We have locked arms to steady ourselves against the wind ripping off the plateau of ice. High in the sky, a trio of condors rides the currents. Under our boots the red rock is smooth but gouged with long scars left by the retreating glacier. The place seems wild and volatile, prehistoric.
Later, we retreat along the cliff and let the wind push us back in the direction we came. We will come down out of the foothills the next day, make the long walk to a ranger station and meet a bus bound for Puerto Natales.
A week later, when my time in Patagonia is over, I will fly in a small plane over Torres, over the ice field and others like it that swaddle the southern Andes. I will look down and see those white blankets raked with graceful, concentric lines suggesting the slow but restless motion of a landscape still sorting itself out.